BootsnAll Travel Community

Do any of you do kids itineraries using good children's literature? We have found books to be one of the best tools in our family world travel.... that allows even a very young child to connect and be educated effortlessly in a fun way. There are so many great books for kids that enrich the travel experience.

We just did a video on this topic on Venice:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43ZIJ5kbQsk

And here is a post that explains more about this style which is great for kids:

http://www.soultravelers3.com/2007/05/kids-lit-itiner.html

I know we have discussed books before here but I got so many people who were not familiar with using books for kids itineraries that I thought I would mention it here.

One of the best things about RV travel is the amount of books it allows one to bring for extended travel. We saw the amazing prehistoric art at the Altamira caves today and I found two more great ones to add to our collection! We are going to the next famous caves with art in France soon, so it is a fun way to do a unit study on the move. lol.

I think this is a great idea - we even do it for our little day trips around London. Here are some of our favourites...

The Little Red Engine Goes To Town is one in a series of books about a train written in the 1950's. In this book, the train visits the Festival of Britain, which was held on the South Bank (kind of opp. Houses of Parliament). Many of the buildings are still standing and there is still a feeling of 'festivity' there, with the London Eye (ferris wheel), art venues and street performers.

Paddington Bear is a great British favourite, that I enjoyed as a small child, and my children now like. Paddington is a bear from Peru, who is named after the railway station he is found in. The books cover his adventures around London, and include some recognisable landmarks such as Buckingham Palace. They are great for younger children.

Katie in London is a lovely story, which is basically a children's guide to the main sights in London.

If you have a child who likes ballet or the theatre, Ballet Shoes would be a great book to base an itinerary on. It's a lovely book about three orphaned girls who live with their guardian on the Cromwell Road and walk to the museums every day, arguing over which one they are going to visit (dinosaurs at Natural Hist. or dolls houses at V&A - the dolls houses are now in the Bethnal Green Museum of Childhood). The children travel by tube to their ballet school and work at real theatres.

Not in London, but one of my favourite series of books, Swallows and Amazons, is mostly set in the Lake District, a beautiful area of England. The books contain evocative descriptions of the region, which is not too much changed since they were written, including descriptions of the local way of life: farming, charcoal burning etc. While you are in the Lake District you can also visit Beatrix Potter's house, which is lovely and is instantly recognisable from the illustrations in a number of her books.

Some of the books in the Swallows and Amazons series are set in the Norfolk Broads, another lovely area of England. You can hire your own boat (or take a tour) and paddle down the canals cut through the reeds, looking for birds like the children in the book. A large part of the area is a national park, and you can also visit restored properties to learn about the way of life in years gone by.

Hope this is useful to anyone planning to visit England. If anyone has suggestions for other parts of the world (particularly Asia, NZ and Australia), I'd love to hear them. As a child, I loved reading the mixed up files of Mrs Basil E something before visting the Met in NY.

Oh wallop, these are great ideas and we are heading to Ireland and the UK, so will look into some of these that we do not know.

We are really on the same wave length with books aren't we? Love it!!

My husband and I have always sought out novels set in the places that we visit, so why not do the same with kids? I've always found it a great way to get a feeling for a place and help you to understand it. On that theme, have you ever read Leo the African? Some of it is set in Fez hundreds of years ago, you won't be surprised to hear that it hasn't changed much!

As well as books, we are also trying to find other ways of linking to places that we are planning to visit on our trip, so that the children can learn about them and be excited about visiting. We have 'adopted' a baby orang utang at Sepilok Sanctuary in Malaysian Borneo and received photos of him and information about his likes and dislikes etc. The children are now really interested in orang utangs, so we have been looking at books and watching TV programmes about them.

My daughter's school teacher is Australian, which has sparked a fascination with Oz amongst her whole class. They even turned their classroom into an RV and travelled around Oz for two weeks (with the help of the internet and a jar of vegemite!) so she has strong views about what she wants to see when we actually get there.

Sorry, this is a bit of a diversion from books, but I think anything that gets them excited about where they are visiting will help enrich the experience when we get there.